The ice cool face of the future

A grand performance: Australian Open champion Roger Federer raises the trophy in triumph at Melbourne Park yesterday. Photo: Getty Images

Roger Federer collected his second grand slam title in Melbourne yesterday and few would bet against him winning plenty more, writes Richard Hinds.

For Roger Federer, winning what most assume was merely his first Australian Open title will add to the growing body of statistical evidence supporting the theory that he is, in both ranking and ability, the best tennis player on the planet.

Such are his gifts, there are even some willing to bet yesterday's victory will one day enhance claims he is the greatest player the game has seen.

However, as impressively as Federer played to beat the flat-footed Marat Safin 7-6 (7-3), 6-4, 6-2, the final itself did not provide many anecdotes to embellish tales of the 22-year-old's rare talent.

Those who saw the final will rave about Federer's impressive, almost complete, repertoire. They will have been impressed by the cool composure of the Swiss. They will have been enchanted by his smooth, flawless strokes. They will cherish the memory of having seen a great talent perform a significant deed. Yet they will not be able to boast that they saw him at his very best.

What this Australian Open final lacked, like so many before it, was a worthy foil for the worthy champion. In three of the previous four finals, Andre Agassi swatted aside his three stooges Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Arnaud Clement and Rainer Schuettler. Despite all the expectations, Federer's destruction of Safin was no more dramatic.

In retrospect, the missing element this year was Agassi himself. His elimination by Safin in the semi-finals meant Federer was not forced to seize the belt from the defending champion, but simply fill a vacant title.

None of which removes the polish from Federer's victory. After a curiously tentative opening in which the combatants treated each other's serve as if it were crockery at a Greek wedding, Federer simply had too much game for Safin, who said his long road to the final had left no gas in the tank.

With the enigmatic Safin, it is difficult to tell whether the fatigue defence was valid. The Russian had an extra day to rest before the final after playing his semi-final on Thursday and, in 2002, he had produced a similarly lifeless effort in the final when losing to Thomas Johansson on relatively fresh legs. But one Safin claim could not be disputed - he had come up against an exceptional opponent in rare form.

"It's not like I played against a yo-yo, a guy who doesn't know how to play tennis," said Safin, who went so far as to compare Federer with Pete Sampras. (Federer had the better backhand, he said, but Sampras the superior serve and volley.) "He is a great player," said Safin of the new champion. "He has all the shots, he has volley, he has serve. He's the most complete player on the tour."

Neither Federer's performance nor his celebration was particularly emotional. But perhaps that is a sign that a man who has the Wimbledon and Australian Open trophies and the No.1 ranking has become a cold-blooded accumulator in the manner of Sampras and Bjorn Borg, the players to whom he is often compared.

Understandably, Federer said the achievement did not feel as overwhelming as his breakthrough victory at Wimbledon last year. But, despite his relatively matter-of-fact appearance, nor had it left him cold. "I cannot really describe what I felt right then, right there," he said of his Wimbledon triumph. "But now I kind of know how it feels. It's still really nice, and it gets me all emotional inside."

The final word is significant. Like Borg, much of what Federer thinks and feels stays inside. His post-match interview filled four pages yesterday but he would have done just as well to let his racquet keep talking for him.

Perhaps a mark of Federer's incredible ability is that his victory prompted questions about the possibility of winning the grand slam, much as Tiger Woods's early deeds excited the same possibility in golf. Federer made the predictable noises about how difficult that would be, before his quiet confidence betrayed him: "You know, I'm the only guy who has a chance this year to do it, so that's not a bad situation."

Safin deserved rich praise for his unexpected rise to the final. However, as much as his energy-sapping victories over Agassi and Andy Roddick might have contributed to his eventual downfall, in the future the Russian will be judged on what he does when he reaches the final, not on how he gets there. Particularly given his mind seemed to suffer as much as his body yesterday.

A model of restraint earlier in the tournament, Safin broke his first racquet midway through the first set and a second soon after. Then, serving at 3-5 and deuce in the second set, Safin lined up to serve to the advantage court, only to look up and find Federer was waiting, correctly, on the other side. It was not the act of a man whose mind was fully focused.

Then there was his interaction with the crowd. After one fan yelled: "Safin you can do it", he shrugged his shoulders and replied: "I'm trying." Later, with the match slipping away, another spectator yelled, harmlessly: "Come on." Replied Safin: "Don't give me a hard time, I'm trying my best." Naturally, that motivated some in the crowd to give him a hard time - at least by the oh-so-polite standard of tennis crowds.

"Over the net," one shouted as Safin served yet another fault. While the rest of the crowd hissed its disapproval, it wasn't bad advice for a man who had served 33 aces in the semi-finals and could manage just three yesterday.

If the nature of yesterday's match prompted observers to dwell as much on Safin's failure as they did on Federer's victory, that was perhaps a consequence of their disappointment that the final had not delivered the anticipated contest. But even the most valuable stamps and coins were at one time commonplace. Like a collector's item, as Federer's record grows, so will the currency of yesterday's victory.